If you’re underway with a social media initiative, chances are you’ve encountered criticism. If not, fear of criticism may be holding you back. If you’re in either of these categories, I happily share the following presentation, delivered recently to the Austin Board of Realtors’ annual Realty Round-Up event. Titled, “The good, the bad and the offensive of managing criticism online,” following are the highlights.
Monitor – If you don’t even know when you’re being mentioned on a social network, you certainly can’t respond effectively. There are a variety of programs you can use to monitor your networks -- we use Radian6 for some of our clients.
Engage – You don’t want your first engagement in a social network to be in defending yourself. Be there first and create your own online reputation, before someone else does.
Evaluate – As outlined by Mashable.com, feedback generally falls into four categories, including: straight forward problem; constructive criticism; merited attack; and trolling / spammers / just plain bitter (okay, the “just plain bitter” was my addition). Figure out which category your feedback or comments are in and respond accordingly.
Respond, or not – If the feedback falls into one of the first three categories, respond appropriately as outlined in the presentation. If it falls in the fourth, no response is typically the best one.
Repeat – Don’t let online criticism scare you away from social media initiatives. The discussions are going to happen -- you can simply choose whether they take place with or without your voice.
Go forth and conquer your online communities, my friends! Now, it will be interesting to see how I manage the comments for this post…
The good, bad and ugly of managing criticism online
Update 11/3/ - Ironically, our commenting section for this post is down. Please visit our Facebook page to post comments underneath the post about Stacy’s blog.